The Piute Cabin gets closed up in October.
Ranger gone, cats gone…it’s probably only a few days before the mice move back
in. When my season starts in June, I open the door to be greeted by stale air,
heavy with winter dust and the aroma of Deer Mice.
Last
winter they fared quite well, having finally managed to break into the one
mouse-proof shelf in my storage cabinet. This tall piece of rustic furniture
was fashioned from locally-milled pine, right here, likely soon after the cabin
was completed in 1943. Its lower half is two spacious shelves behind swinging
doors. For decades, probably, the lower shelf has been within reach of rodents (whose
distant relatives gnawed their way in from the hollow space underneath it). So:
trash bags, cleaning fluids, canned goods and such get to live down there while
bulk foodstuffs—like the big sacks of rice and beans all rangers subsist on—are
safely stored just above. Once a year that lower shelf receives a thorough Spring-cleaning
after mice have gleaned, at their leisure, what little they could during the long,
cold months. My dishtowels and tinfoil get compulsively nibbled to shreds; they
use hundreds of tiny pieces for
feathering nests (but plenty of these are just scattered around). I find turds
in the big box of TIDE. I find bright-green versions of those ubiquitous
pellets inside my carton of Brillo Pads; apparently they can derive nourishment
from detergents and steel wool. But last winter, with hunger-driven diligence,
they finally finished gnawing through ¾”-thick sawn-pine flooring and gained
entry into the upper shelf—land of fat & plenty!—to wreak small-scale havoc.
Guess who got to clean it all up?
June 16th was my
first day back in Piute-country this year. Mike Gaffney, a young guy on our
firecrew—and a carpenter during the off-season—rode up with me to take out the
old stove and install a new one which was getting flown in soon by U.S. Marines.
(Umm…this calls for some explanation. But the subsequent Marine Corps invasion
of Piute Meadows is a whole ‘nother story….)
Mike and I spent that
entire first workday in the cabin; Mike dismantling the antique cast-iron woodstove
and me clearing out dust and cobwebs plus cleaning up after mice. This caused
considerable terror and mayhem in the local rodent community, which had really
proliferated over the winter…in fact, if you were a Piute Cabin Deer Mouse,
this day would forevermore be known as “Black Sunday.” They were darting around
all day; I’d catch brief glimpses but clearly heard—loud on the plywood floor— almost
constant scampering. I set traps right off, launching a full-scale raticide. Peanut
butter, as bait, is deadlier than cheese and the first trap snapped shut in just
minutes. This one caught it right across the ears and I took a good, hard look
at those liquid-
black eyes staring up at me accusingly with the
metal bar deeply imbedded in its fragile skull. Far from cute. When I opened the
trap, a thick drop of blood welled from its nostrils and fell to the floor. I
carried that soft little carcass outside—held, as dead mice always are, by the
tail’s very tip—and wung it over the porch railing as far as I could, out into
thick grass. Just as I walked back in, another trap set behind the stove went
off—mere feet from where Mike was working away. Reloaded both traps. After only
ten minutes I heard that sound of patent finality yet again. Must be a clan living right there in the
woodpile….This one wasn’t such a clean kill—bar across the back—and it
flopped around a couple times. I saw it draw a final breath. Yet another trip
outside….
Two more of those wicked
SNAP!s while I was clearing out the cabinet’s shelves which, of course, reeked
with the acrid smell of rodent piss and rodent shit. They’d moved into the
upper one and established a colony: my ten-pound sack of flour had two gaping
holes at its bottom leading into an apparent tunnel-system—a mouse’s “big rock
candy mountain”—and the entire shelf was liberally strewn with little brown
turds and drifts of flour. A nest made out of dishtowel and foil bits was in
one corner. My rice and beans and pasta, fortunately, were actually all in three-pound
coffee cans (whose plastic lids were gnawed but still intact). The whole lot was
peed- and pooped-upon so I started removing everything. The flour & urine mixture
made a paste that had then hardened into what would be a passable cement. I got
a paint-scraper and heavy-duty wire brush from my tool chest and went to work. Me
on my knees, scraping up this vile substance; sweeping it all out with a whiskbroom,
breathing the vapors: life of a ranger.
While
pulling the last stuff off the upper shelf, something soft and brown dashed
behind one of those big cans filled with rice. Looking around, I grabbed a
nearby coffee filter-cone—perfect!—and,
shifting the can, slammed it down. Gotcha!
Then: A club…I need a club. Found
one right at hand in the form of my whiskbroom, which I flipped around and held
by the broom-straw, handle foremost. Quickly lifting the filter-cone, I caught just
a glimpse of my huddled, blinking target before neatly bludgoning her over the
head. She flopped twice and died. I knew it was a “she” because she was
obviously in the final stage of pregnancy. Blood oozed from her mouth and
nostrils and began to form a very small but poignant pool. (Looking at a puddle
of fresh blood, you can’t believe how red
it is.) I’d executed her with cold calculation and almost no remorse; have
done this before—whacking them over the head—and would do it again, any time. When small mammals break into your
home, eat your food, and start damaging stuff, they cease to be adorable
little-fuzzy-things and start to seem more like large insects. Forget the Have-a-Heart route! Shouldn’t
even start in on this…but it’s terribly naive to think they’ll just resume
their happy lives in some nice place far away. In fact, I’ve heard remarkable
stories about relocated pests returning from great distances, even crossing
rivers. I explain to well-meaning people that when you catch & release a
wild animal it’s very much analagous to someone trapping you, and to then be turned loose on a street corner in Oakland or The
Bronx. Lots of other critters, who really don’t want any new neighbors, already
live there and you’re going to be run off or murdered in short order. But I
don’t take killing lightly; I’ve never killed animals for sport—never even
fished—and, to be honest, did feel a
twinge of good ol’ Christian-style guilt as I carried her body out and tossed
it over the rail. Those inside her were probably still alive but I quickly
pushed that thought out of my mind. I’ll not have rodents in my larder!
Finished
up that tedious job by cutting out a piece of brass window-screening mesh and
stapling it over the gnawed hole. Helped Mike for a bit then, before starting
another project, I took the lid off an old plastic trash can that held fuel for
my chainsaw plus parts and tools and oily rags, just to check on its contents. (It
was actually a “retired” trash can from before my time whose bottom had been
gnawed-through by a woodrat.) I was stunned to see another nest built up against
a two-gallon gas can. Stunned, because the inside of that trash can reeked of gas and two-cycle engine oil;
the atmosphere in that mouse’s chosen home put L.A. smog to shame. The nest
itself was a compact sphere of cotton stuffing removed from the cushioned seat
of the big easy-chair by my bed (which a former ranger had cleverly made from a
section of hollow-log and even upholstered herself). I reached down and pulled
it out intact but not before the mother, making her escape, zipped through that
compromised can’s bottom and across the floor to disappear into my woodpile.
Lifting the nest, little pink things dropped from it. I tipped it intentionally
over a cupped hand and more pink things rattled into my palm. Gingerly picked
up the three that had fallen out and added them to those in my hand. Full of
wonder, I counted eight, no, nine squirming
newborns.
They
were pink and brand-new; maybe two days old. Fresh little packets of aliveness
in my hand—the very essence of birth and fecundity. Their semi-transparent pink
skin, the color of new life, was stretched over thread-like ribs and visibly
pulsed with blood and breath. No hint of eyelids yet but I could clearly see black
bulges beneath the pink membrane that would develop into those big, gleaming eyes.
I could practically feel the frantic
division of cells. They were identical; hairless except for short muzzle-whiskers
of the finest hair imaginable. Mouths were tiny puckers that could clasp a
nipple. Their paws were stumps with tiny bumps where toes and claws would grow.
Wholly perfect, but incomplete, they radiated an amazing quantity of heat into
my sweating palm and I felt slightly horrified. They aren’t done yet!
“Hey,
Mike…check this out!” He came over
and we both stared with slack jaws. The mass emitted barely-audible squeaking
cries. It didn’t seem possible that they were ready to be in this cold, harsh
world. You only see human babies at
this stage in little glass jars at the museum or photographs from LIFE magazine. But they were very much
alive. And I was going to have to kill them. Mike asked breathlessly, “What’re
you gonna do with’em?” I already had
a plan and headed out the door and down to the river; I just couldn’t face putting
them under my heel—a thing I’ve been forced to do from time to time when one of
my cats is playfully torturing some damaged victim.
Carried
them down the path with near-reverence and knelt solemnly on the lush, grassy
bank of a broad bend near where I dip my water buckets. Took a last, long look.
They…aren’t done yet! Then, like a
farmer sowing seed, broad-scattered them all upriver.
Drowning in cold water is
allegedly a good way to die; this seemed like the most humane option. The
river, fresh snowmelt, had been 46° the previous evening when I took a very quick dip—had checked with my thermometer—so
they wouldn’t last long. Now, this might sound a little weird but…I wanted to
watch them float past, one by one, and see how long they’d survive. (This was me
letting my scientist-alter-ego come out. Under the circumstances, I suppose it
was a defense-mechanism for distancing myself from the existential implications
of what I’d just done.) A slow current on the outside of this bend swept them
down to me. I was leaned way out, waiting with a very peculiar kind of
anticipation, and peering into deep, green water. Embryonic mice, well under
the surface, tumbled by one after another, rolling on invisible currents and
dying.
Everything changed. The
world suddenly became very different and was now totally silent, completely
closed-in. My “self” got left behind—Tim was not present for what happened next—but
somehow, some part of me remained as a witness:
Calm, flowing water
turned into space, or infinity—timeless, dimensionless. The baby mice were
there. They appeared large; they were dimly concious, and they were everything that I am. They were all of life, everything, from beginning
to end. The first ones that passed were gulping and waving their incipient
limbs. The others were still. Then they were gone. All this meant something
that was of monumental significance.
It was over (mostly forgotten already) and I
stood up, shaken. I knew something had happened to me, something extraordinary,
but as is always the case with these rare visitations, our minds immediately
reduce the incident to something comprehensible and familiar and proceed with
forgetting as quickly as possible. (I’ve had similar kinds of experiences
before….) Forced to conceptualize what I’d witnessed, I could see astronauts
floating through space, cut adrift from their craft and life-support, like that
scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The
“message” was fading so swiftly—What…what
was it?—and in its place there was an agonized sensation, like when you wake
up and try to hold onto a dream that’s just slipping away. You try so hard to
pull it back…but it’s going, gone. I walked back to the cabin gravely and, when
Mike asked what’d happened, made some flip comment about astronauts, and got right
back to work.
Shortly
after, and for the last time, a trap by my woodpile went off. There’s the mother…got her. I’d wiped
out the whole clan in the space of hours with no help from my cats. It had to
be done…nothing I could do about it.
31
Jul 1991, 26 Feb 2013
© 2013 Tim
Forsell
All
rights reserved.
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